Life cover rivals PPI for mis selling of the century

Payment protection insurance (PPI) is not the only legacy mis-selling issue that the Central Bank should be investigating.

Whole of life assurance policies, widely sold during the late 1980s and the entire decade of the 1990s, are still bombing out, leaving their owners with no choice but to pay much higher premiums or lose life insurance cover.

They are the forgotten ugly sisters of the mis-selling world but just like PPI, these overpriced, complicated, opaque assurance policies have cost consumers thousands in lost benefits.

Nearly all fall outside the six-year statute of limitations period for investigation of the Financial Ombudsman, a legislative shortcoming that this newspaper has been campaigning against.

Policy reviews are not required for the first 10 years of these contracts under the